Poem

Eat the charred tag-end of bread
or a greeny peach
not sweet enough to dribble down your chin—

still, a certain forthrightness
in the crunch
the bitter edge.

Hunger makes the palate fresh to the pleasure
of imperfect things.
The sparse facts of our lives—and they are

separate from the truth—could merely be
that we are born in a certain wrinkle of earth,
seed cast into a ditch,

rained upon and risen green and straight in the stalk,
producing nuggets someday crushed
by the teeth of children we will not know,

nuggets burst and hearty of flavor
that bleeds through the fresh bone and flesh,
making it strong.

Or perhaps we are seeds of a fruit consumed
by grackles,
passing as honesty through gullet and gut

emerging sweet or acrid,
whatever is true in the way of the grackle,
and sinking into orchard earth.

And if we see ourselves as grain
thrust up and winnowed, ground into bread
or fruit dropping heavy and green

from a dying tree, perhaps we will come to surrender
with arms flung open,
faces raised to the sky of cloud and falling rain.

Mary E. O’Dell lives in Middletown, Ky.